The more kinds of cellular phones with camera functions (camera phone) supplied in the market, the more applications are developed and used. Even among these applications, the direct print function (a function that enables the printing of pictures by directly connecting a camera phone and a printer) and processing and editing functions for shot pictures in particular inspire users to purchase high-end camera phones. However, since camera phones are necessarily compact enough to fit into pant pockets, and they have to implement various functions such as telephone functions or schedule functions, such advanced picture editing functions are unable to be installed. Therefore, when advanced picture editing is performed, generally, picture data is moved to a computer with superior processing ability, and editing is done on the computer.
One recent picture processing method on computers such as personal computers is a picture frame combination. As the name indicates, the picture frame combination is one which adds a frame to a picture. FIG. 1 shows an outline of the picture frame combination. In FIG. 1, 201 is a picture to which a frame is added, 202 is a picture frame, and 203 is a picture combined with the picture frame. As clearly shown in FIG. 1, picture frame 202 is added around original picture 201 in combined picture 203, adding interest to the picture. Cartoon characters or letters may be combined instead of picture frames.
A flowchart for the picture frame synthesizing process by the prior art is explained as in FIG. 5. When a synthesizing process starts (Step S200), first, the system reads out picture data to be combined and decompresses it (Step S202). The reason for decompressing picture data at this stage is because picture data shot by a digital photographic device such as a camera phone is data in compressed format, and data combination cannot be done in a compressed state. The decompressed picture data is stored in the working memory of the system (Step S204). After picture data decompression is completed, picture frame data to be combined is also decompressed and stored in the working memory (Step S206 and Step S208). Finally, the decompressed picture data and the decompressed picture frame data are combined (Step S210), and the process is finished (Step S212).
The idea of performing the above synthesizing process in a digital camera has existed since before, as shown in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication H11-008831. However, in reality, performing such a synthesizing process in a digital camera or camera phone is difficult because the installed working memory runs short. For example, the data size of a picture shot by a camera with 2 megapixel resolution, which is becoming mainstream, is approximately 500-800 kilobytes. However, when these pictures are decompressed, the data size jumps up to approximately 5.5 megabytes. The data size of a picture frame with 2 megapixel resolution is very small in compressed format, but once it is decompressed, it becomes 5.5 megabytes which is same as the picture data. Therefore, in order to combine a picture with 2 megapixel resolution and a picture frame by using prior synthesizing processing methods, at least 11 megabytes of working memory is needed. Difficulties caused by this problem increase as the resolution of a camera increases. Installing a large working memory in a system raises the cost of systems and requires extra space. Consequently, in a digital camera or camera phone in which the amount of installable memory is limited, installing a function to combine a picture of some megapixels and a picture frame is difficult.
Currently, the following technology is devised as a technology to combine a picture and a picture frame stored in a digital camera. In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication 2003-157326, an invention in which a picture shot by a camera phone is sent to a server on the Internet, said server synthesizing the picture with a picture frame and sending it to the camera phone again, is described. In this invention, the low processing ability of a camera phone is compensated by making a server computer with superior processing ability, combine pictures. Nevertheless, since communication lines are slow, and extra communication fees are required, as of now, pictures able to be combined by this method are limited to ones with very low resolution. This method is suitable for e-mail, but not for printing combined pictures. In order to print a picture combined with a picture frame, an invention is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication 2000-221611. In this invention, when printing by using a printer, picture data shot by a digital camera is combined with a picture frame in the printer and then printed. The picture frame combination is done by a printer with extra processing ability instead of a shooting instrument with limited processing ability.